Magic and Mayhem: A Collection of 21 Fantasy Novels

by Jasmine Walt

  “I’m not Abigail.”

  “Really now, enough. Please,” she says. Her tone is soothing, encouraging, as though she’s trying to placate an injured animal. She’s motherly, or the way I imagine a mother should be. “Come, let me make you one of my healing teas.”

  I step back, shaking my head. “Where are we?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” the woman mumbles to herself. Then, louder, to me: “Salem Village, 1691. The same place you were when you went to bed last night, and the same place you will be when you wake tomorrow morning. Must we always do this? Now, come with me before you start to raise suspicions again.”

  “Again?”

  “The town already thinks your mind’s gone ill,” the strange woman says. “But it could be worse, you know, with this talk of witchcraft flitting about.”

  I glance in every direction for the path that brought me here—looking for answers as though I’ll find them in the dark bark of the decaying maple trees or hidden amongst the forest’s daytime shadows. But all I see are the shadow men skipping out of sight every time I look where they’re standing. I’m catching glimpses of them now, more than I’ve seen in a lifetime. Faces. Some sinister, some kind. Some confused, others afraid. I always assumed they were all evil. Is that not the case?

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I have to...I have to...” My mind stumbles.

  I remember two different yesterdays. The yesterday where my womb is full with my child and the yesterday where I am gathering wood with this woman. I look down at her basket once more, recognizing it now. I made that for her.

  I know her.

  “Verity?” I say, calling her by name, confirming what I know is impossible for me to know.

  “Come,” she says. “I’ll fix you right up. You can tell me all about it.”

  I can’t tell her anything—but I sense she knows this. Sense she understands that I prefer to keep to myself. Further, my memories are slipping away like water on silk. I remember running. I remember chasing Anna, but I can’t remember why. I can remember that her skin was smooth and light, and that she held the scent of soap better than anyone else I ever knew.

  Anna, my baby.

  Verity hooks her elbow with mine and leads me out of the forest and through the town. Every step of the way she peeks around corners and hurries me past anyone that looks our way. I follow, not knowing where else to go and because I do not know who here I can trust but this woman. I don’t even know how I know to trust her.

  I feel an eternity away from home but, at the same time, I feel that this is exactly where I belong. As Verity leads the way, it’s as though I know every turn she will make before it comes to pass.

  Memories of this woman flood through me. Of us sitting fire-side, knitting for winter. Had that been last winter or had it been just weeks ago? Confusion takes my hand like a long lost friend, and I sense this is not the first time my memory has bled out.

  Soon we fall upon a cabin. Inside, everything is familiar: the tiny wooden table by the door, the simple wooden sitting chair by the small fireplace with a hanging metal pot, and the half melted taper candles in brass candleholders scattered about. The room’s cluttered with bowls and half-woven wreaths and dried smears of clay.

  I know the closed door leads to a bedroom with a cot near a window that overlooks the forest. There will be a spinning wheel with a treadle in the corner, though I cannot remember how to use one.

  The room, when I enter it, is just as I ‘remember’, even as I do not understand how I have such a knowing of this place. This is my home.

  Verity helps me sponge off as much as she can. I tell her I’ll do the rest. Each time I dip the sponge into the wooden bowl of water, my blood darkens the water like ink. When I’m finished, I sit on a small cot near the window in my room while she warms food over a small fire in the main area. I won’t say anything until I know where I am and what’s going on.

  “Who did this to you?” Verity asks, but I swallow around a knot in my throat and say nothing.

  My day up until this point takes on a dream-like haze.

  One of the Dark Ones sits at the end of my cot. A woman. I suppose I’ve assumed they were all men until now. I want to yell at her—Get away!—but I know how that would look to Verity, so I try to ignore the shadow woman.

  Another part of me, however, wants to take in every last detail of her. For years I have wondered exactly how they look. Do they all have such angry eyes as this one? Are they all cursed with two sharp teeth protruding past their lips on either side of their mouths?

  Verity bustles in with a bowl of herbed broth. My stomach rumbles. The hunger comes out of nowhere but feels as though it’s been there for too long.

  I lift the bowl to my lips and sip carefully, the steam tingling my face. Whatever it is, it tastes dirty and bitter. I lower it to my lap. The warmth on my thighs makes me feel overheated and flushed and at the same time makes me realize how cold I have been, how near-frostbitten my feet and toes and fingers are. So cold they itch and burn at the same time.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Bramble leaves and cedar,” she says, as though she’s plucked the question straight from my mind. “It’s to help you heal. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

  I don’t see any reason why I would tell anyone, or why it would matter if I did.

  Verity looks at me a long moment. “I suppose you won’t, especially after I found you in the state I did.”

  “I won’t,” I promise her, only because she deserves a response.

  “It’s freezing in here,” Verity says, bustling to an open window. “Why on earth is your window open?”

  She stops short, and I glance over. A raven sits perched on my window sill.

  “Shoo!” Verity says, swatting at the bird. It takes off, and she pulls the window closed. She stares out the window a bit longer, and her hand lifts to her cheek. “Oh, dear.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shakes her head. “A bird coming to your window. A bad omen.”

  For a moment, I’m taken aback, but then my sense of Verity floods through me. She’s always been superstitious.

  “Nevermind that,” she says, sitting on a wooden stool beside my cot. “We’ll bring some luck your way. Now, tell me what happened.”

  It’s the same question I’m asking myself.

  I don’t want to tell her the truth, and I couldn’t even if I did. I don’t remember what the truth is. This makes it easy for me; now I don’t have to lie. “I...I don’t know what happened.”

  She raises her eyebrow. It’s something anyone could have done, and yet, it’s uniquely something I’ve seen her do before. It’s her fine brown eyebrow lifting over her tea-colored eyes and long, dark eyelashes. They are eyes that can only belong to her and an expression she has made all her own, imprinted somewhere in the history of my mind.

  “I’d stay with you tonight—to make sure you’re okay,” she says finally, “but I can’t. You know what that could mean for both of us.”

  I don’t know. All I know is that I have four years of memories of living in this place, and I know that I am not from here, that I have another life, and that I have to find my baby. But that life with the baby—it’s hazy. I can see her sleeping in my arms, see her tiny hand wrapped around my finger...I feel an overwhelming amount of love for her, and beneath that the feeling that something is wrong. Very wrong.

  But what else? Why can’t I remember more? Why can’t I remember the life she is a part of?

  “Maybe you should leave now.” I hate the abrasiveness of my words, but I need to be alone.

  Verity presses her hands against her knees. “Yes,” she says, a note of defeat in her voice, “perhaps I should.”

  But she doesn’t stand to leave.

  “Abigail,” she says softly, reaching for my hand. I flinch, and she immediately retracts her gesture. She smiles sadly. “If you need anything, you will let me know, won’t you?”

  I swallo
w around a lump in my throat. “Be well, Verity.”

  Be well? Why did I say that?

  Verity nods at me as though I’m hopeless. That’s probably true. I see her to the door, and she leaves with a wilted posture, her shoulders sinking as though someone has stolen all the air from her lungs. My heart aches after her, the kind woman who offered me her help.

  From beneath my bed, I pull out a small wooden box. It’s empty, and the emptiness makes me angry. This whole life is empty. I don’t know what to do, where to go, how to fix this.

  I stare at the heart-shaped birthmark on my right hand, right near where the thumb meets the wrist, and I know Anna is out there somewhere, needing me. Needing me even more than I need her.

  As the hours pass, more memories of my life, of my Mama and Pa, come and go too quickly for me to hold onto them. When I was six...Where did I live when I was a child? I remember arriving in Salem, at this very settlement, but that was many years ago. Not today. But hadn’t it been today, too?

  The memory seems awkward, as though the memories can’t possibly be mine, and yet they are more real than anything else.

  Whatever memories I have been trying to remember blur away like an evaporating dream. The Darkness remains, the only thing that is wholly familiar to me.

  I belong to these woods now. What had I wanted to remember? A memory skips through my mind again, and I shiver.

  How could I belong to this place from centuries ago? I had only arrived here today, from 1961. Right? Yes. That’s it. 1961 feels right. But then Verity’s words swim through my mind. No, that’s not it. I’ve got my numbers all mixed up. It’s 1691, not 1961. That’s what Verity had said.

  Another memory pushes in, drowning my thoughts. I arrived here four years ago, in 1687, sixteen years old and orphaned, so yes, indeed that makes today’s year 1691. Verity had been the one to find me. She wrapped me in a hug and shooed away all the gawkers and made me a sandwich and some tea, and for two years I lived with her in her small cottage until I was ready to be on my own.

  So if I can remember my arrival here in 1687 so clearly, then why does 1961 still feel right? Why do I still remember arriving here today for the first time? How is it that I remember arriving here for the first time...twice?

  My head throbs, and I climb into my cot and huddle beneath a thin woolen blanket. This is my home. The pillow fits my head. The straw mattress forms to my body. But this isn’t right. I belong here, but I’m not where I’m supposed to be. There is somewhere more important. I was somewhere else just hours ago. I’m certain of it.

  I yawn, and my eyelids grow heavy. I just can’t keep my eyes open any longer. Even my mind is slowing down, but I hold desperately to my thoughts.

  I have to get away from Salem and back to wherever I came from. Where had that been?

  I envision a porch. No, not a porch. A boat deck. I came to America on a boat with my family. They left me behind, and I found my way here. I’m forgetting something. Something about today. I just know it. It’s there, on the brink of my mind. What was it...?

  I can’t make sense of anything, and my will to try is quickly evaporating. I fight to hold to the last lingering memory of another life. A life where voices called me Rose. I hold to the one memory I think can bring me back there and force my eyes back open.

  Across the room, a table is covered in pigments and canvas and jars of colorful water, and I rush over. There’s a paintbrush, and immediately I set to work, painting the one thing I know I can never let myself forget.

  Anna.

  Yes, I must have had another life before this. As surely as I know that is not possible, I know it is for certain the truth. I will not rest until this memory is preserved. I cannot let sleep steal this last memory away.

  I stare at the painting until it has dried, then I set the empty box beneath my bed to a new purpose. A capsule to hold the thing dearest to me—the memory of my daughter.

  I have no idea how I will do it, but I must find my way back to her.

  3

  December 1691

  All I do is cry. I’m positively ill over being separated from my daughter. Pain sears every inch of my body, drowns me in my loss. Without Anna, I only want to die, but the chance she might be out there somewhere, alive, keeps me going. I cling to her memory, keep it crisp in my mind, paint it into pictures and tuck them away in my box so that her memory can never fade.

  Verity insists I must take a job, to feign normalcy. She doesn’t know I had another life before this. She thinks I’ve always been Abigail, every damn day of my life. She says I used to work at a bakery, but they asked me to leave two weeks ago. But part of me knows I was not here two weeks ago. That I only arrived yesterday.

  My memories, however, are also Abigails, and Abigail knows that no one in Salem will hire her. When I ‘remember’ this for the first time, it makes me angry. Thankfully, Verity has brought me the things a person would need—food and wood for a fire—and I thank her profusely.

  “It’s the least I can do,” she says. “Besides which, you’re always helping me with my laundry.”

  The comment triggers another thought of Abigail’s. A thought from weeks ago, from before I arrived here yesterday. A memory from the last time I hung her linens to dry, I—or rather, Abigail—had noticed a large black circle of a stain on one of Verity’s sheets. One of the young women in the town noticed, too. Abigail quickly snatched the sheet back down off the line, but not before the woman glared at her and stomped off, assigning some sort of meaning to the black stain that I could not fathom.

  The next day, however, the Good Reverend kneeled outside my home and prayed.

  I am called to my cabin window, but it is not a voice that calls. It is a howl, a low groaning of tree boughs. Slowly, it becomes a strange song, a faraway lullaby I’ve heard before, some long-ago time I can’t perfectly remember.

  I sense the morning is a long way off, that I have wakened in the dead of night. Outside, smoky wisps of clouds float past the full red moon looming in the dark sky. The folks of Salem call it a witch’s moon. Beads from the early night rain blur my window. A breath that’s not my own fogs the glass. Lines trace through, spelling my name.

  But it is not Abigail, the name I keep now. Nor is it Rose, the name I left behind. The name in the window is one I gave myself as a child, some lifetime ago. A name I remember and keep as I do all the names that have belonged to me. This is the name of my escape.

  Cordovae.

  The name is a whisper in my mind and a panic in my chest. A dizziness rushes to my head, but my balance and vision quickly restore. I’ve felt this way before. When I...when I...I cannot place it. I only know it means something will happen, and I hope it is something that will bring me back to my baby. To Anna.

  The fog lifts. My window is nothing more than a splintered frame for the woods outside, the red moon hanging low in the patchy sky. The music, slow and heavy, sweet but dark, slips through with the draft. The calling is alive in my stomach, pulling me so strongly I feel as though I will surely topple forward if I do not comply.

  If I follow this eerie tune, I risk being caught by my town, but I will not know peace until I obey the burning desire to honor the call.

  Queasy with the need to run toward the pull, I slip on the fingerless gloves Verity knit for me to hide the birthmark on my wrist—the people of Salem would not take kindly to such markings. Then I grab my shawl and head outside. In the icy night’s breeze, my nightdress flutters near my ankles. I can only hope no one catches me stumbling through the darkness, for they already think me lost to the Puritan ways.

  Only Verity has shown me any kindness, but after yesterday, she must think me afflicted. The town had found me the same way three years ago: an orphaned young woman in a nightdress and no sense about her. And though I know I cannot afford to let it happen again, my body will not allow me to resist the pull of the calling.

  Soon, people will cast their fingers toward me and declare me a witch, as talk of w
itch hunts has been all the murmur of the town for some time now. With such rumors swirling about the settlement, I have to be careful. Especially now, outside in the night.

  I should have stayed inside.

  No sooner do I have that thought than the pull intensifies, as though someone has reached into me, grabbed my gut, and yanked me closer.

  Candlelight flickers in the window of a nearby home, and I hurry to take cover in the forest. My heart pounds in my chest, and I glance back over my shoulder, trying to look everywhere at once to see if anyone is coming after me.

  When I see no one, my fears drift away, carried by the notes that float through the night air. To my right is one of the Dark Ones, and I can’t help but look, even though I know he is faster, even though I know he will be gone when I turn my head. All I catch is the last glimpse of his inky shadow as he dips back into the woods.

  The bad ones always hide.

  The crunch of twigs and rustle of leaves has me glancing over my other shoulder, staring into the swell of darkness for an unwelcome companion. I swear I hear footsteps, but as I strain to locate their origin, I lose the sound completely.

  I swallow and try to ground myself in reason: No one from my settlement comes out to the woods any longer, as they fear the town will think they have ventured out to make sacrifices to a dark and false god. That is the real fear in this town—not the wolves or the venomous snakes, but the accusations of our people and what those accusations might mean.

  Cordovae.

  The music whispers my name. My name is part of a drum beat and a rattlesnake hissing. I tug my shawl tighter around my shoulders and dip under the branches that cut across my path. Perhaps I should return to the cabin, for the dangers of the woods at night are best avoided. My feet shuffle further along the path, not heeding the warning that trembles in my bones.

  I blink, trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness, trying to get them to absorb the moonlight shining through the lattice of leaves. Each step is uncertain, my vision limited to the objects closest to me. I keep one hand in front of me, reaching out to ensure I don’t walk into anything.